not feeling so supermom

Top of the morning to you. I’m up early writing this because the kids are going to wake up in a bit and it’s going to be a mad house around here the rest of the day.

Truett is down with hand, foot and mouth disease (again!), which means that I’ll have 2 irritable, bored, non-schooling, hungry, whiny kids on my hands the next couple of days. Kirsten is technically not exhibiting symptoms of HFMD but given her proximity to the virus, there’s a pretty good chance she’s already infected so I’m keeping her away from school just in case.

The last time they got the virus, they didn’t eat for 3 days straight and pretty much spent those days grabbing their mouths and shrieking.

Totally understandable though because I would have done the same if I had a chain of 25 ulcers in my mouth. Ok, bollocks, just thinking about that makes my hair stand.

Good thing I bought a tub of ice-cream (for the kids) and stocked up on bubble tea (for me) last night. Looks like we’re going to need it.

Right then, have a terrific Wednesday and here’s hoping we get through the rest of the week unscathed.

I’m too tired to be funny or witty so here’s a photo of the kids playing doctor. Strangely enough, nobody finds that game fun when they are actually ill.

Is it Monday already? Truett was admitted to the hospital for breathing difficulties on Saturday evening and it has all been a blur since then. As it usually is when your child is hospitalized – everything else gets put on hold until they get better.

He told us he was feeling “quite sick” on Friday morning, which was accompanied by fake cough and a mild temperature. It seemed like one of those illnesses I used to conjure to get out of school but that he managed to give himself a slight fever was quite impressive so I kept him at home the entire day. It was apparent that he inherited my talent for faking illnesses. Back when we did have those fancy head thermometers, I used to drink a glass of hot water and stuff a hot water bottle under my armpits to raise my body temperature. It almost always worked.

Anyhow, not going to school seemed to cure his little malady and he was perfectly fine and spritely for the rest of the day.

Saturday morning, he woke up looking really sick. The fake cough got decidedly nasty and he was curled up on the floor looking miserable. For him to do that on a Saturday morning meant he had to be feeling really ill.

He got progressively worse throughout the day and by evening, his breath was labored and he was making very alarming whistling sounds with his breath.

At 9pm, we decided to bring him into the Children’s A&E just in case. He was whisked into the treatment room for oxygen and several rounds of the inhaler thing before he finally got warded at 2am.

After lots of oxygen some steroid meds and many puffs of the inhaler, he’s looking better. The good thing is that it’s a virus and not chronic asthma, which means that this shouldn’t happen too frequently, or ever again.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. Hopefully he’ll be able to come home today.

UPDATE: Tru is back home and recovering nicely. Still has to be supervised for the next couple of days but he’s doing much better. He’s running around without wheezing or gasping for air, which is a good sign. :)

4am is not a good time for me.

My brain is not designed to function at that time and the only acceptable thing to be doing is to be snuggled up in bed with my bolster and my blanket.

Back in university, I’d pull all-nighters the night before an exam and I usually last till about 4am, which is the point my brain shuts down. I’ll spend the next hour reading the same page 10 times and not register a single word.

When we were dating, we’d talk on the phone late into the night because it’s what romantic couples do right? By 4am, the husband says I’ll start talking gibberish. Words will be coming out of my mouth but they’ll make no sense whatsoever.

One time, I was up expressing milk for Kirsten at 4am. After 20 minutes and 160ml of milk, I dozed off and dropped the bottle. My 160ml ended all over the floor and I ended up literally crying over spilt milk.

So yeah, 4am is not a good time for me at all.

Thankfully, we haven’t had to do the 4am waking thing since the kids started sleeping in our room.

You want milk? You’re not dying of hunger, you’ll get it when the sun is up.

You want a story/song/interpretive dance to help you sleep? Hell to the N and the O.

Basically, if you’re not vomiting out the contents of your dinner or shitting your diaper, close your eyes and go back to sleep.

Yesterday, that sleeping arrangement came to an end. My mom bought us a new and very plush king-sized bed (thanks mom!), which meant that there’s no more space to put the mattresses for the kids on the floor. So it was finally time to pick up where we left off a year ago – the rambo sleep training program. To make their transition easier, we figured we’d shift our previous queen bed to their room to provide a sense of familiarity and all that. Of course, the back up plan is that if we ever caved and let them invade our new bed, we could always crash out on our old bed in their room.

At 1.15am, Kirsten started wailing. “Momma, I need momma, BWAHHHHH!!!” I went in to calm her down, tuck her back in and left the room after she fell asleep.

20 minutes later, it started again, this time even louder. Round 2 of tucking in and patting and sneaking out of the room like a ninja.

At about 2am, the third time. I decided to leave them be and see how it pans out. Truett came shuffling into our room and he muttered “Kirsten wants you.” My plan to sneak in and out clearly wasn’t working so I had to switch tactics. “Tru, go tell mei mei that she needs to sleep in her own room. Just give her a hug and tell her to go to sleep.”

He must have delivered his message because the shrieking stopped. Instead, I heard them wandering the rest of the house in pitch darkness. Which was actually fine by me so I went right back to sleep.

4am, more shrieking. Truett had become sufficiently crabby by now and joined in the wailing. At this point, I decided that things couldn’t get any worse so I played my trump card. I brought them back to their room, gave them a hug, tucked them both in and said “Mommy’s going back to sleep but I’m not going to lock the door so you can come hug me if you miss me. But if you guys scream and wail, I’m going to lock the door. No more crying, just go to sleep, understand?”

I wasn’t really expecting it to work but somehow, it did and we all finally got to sleep.

Tonight, the melee will begin again. Wish me luck.

I’ve discovered the key to surviving an attack of HFMD and unfortunately, it’s not morphine. It’s distraction. Or as magicians like to call it, misdirection.

So this is pretty much how Tru’s brain looks like now.

The pain in his mouth is so immense that it’s hijacking all the other signals being sent to his brain. As a result, he doesn’t eat, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t want to do anything at all. When he’s not crying, he just walks around in a pain-induced stupor.

And so my mission is to hijack those pain signals before it gets to his brain. That’s where the distraction comes in. Hopefully in the process, all the pain signals gets misdirected to say, his left butt cheek.

The thing with distraction is that it’s got to be interesting enough to direct his attention away from the pain, which means that I can’t just stick him in front of the TV or make him play with the same bunch of old toys.

It’s got to be fun, fresh and sufficiently engaging so that he momentarily forgets about the pain.

The other thing with distraction is that it doesn’t last for very long. The novelty wears off and his mind inevitably wanders back to “OMG MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE I’M GOING TO SIT HERE AND SCREAM.”

Which basically makes me a state of the art entertainment centre that’s supposed to come up with new activities to keep him occupied.

By mid afternoon, I got so desperate that I sat the kids down and performed a live magic show in my living room. One of the acts was to pretend to swallow a coin. Ok, it was the only act I knew but it worked so well that the kids spent the next 20 minutes trying to shove handfuls of coins into my mouth. And nose. And ears.

Tomorrow, I’m going to eat fire.